Rose, By Any Other Name
by Screams of a Shadow
Summary: Tired of musical-grad-students, Dr. Saroyan takes finding Dr. Brennan a new assistant into her own hands. She's a great anthropologist, so what's with all the mystery surrounding her?
1. Chapter 1

Dr. Cam Saroyan read over the cover letter and resume that HR had just forwarded to her computer. She had promised to let Dr. Brennan have the ultimate say in who her assistant would be, but she had been cycling through her grad students for 9 months now. It was really getting a bit ridiculous. Ridiculous even, to the point that Cam had decided to take matters into her own hands.

Frowning slightly, Cam once again read through the lengthy list of degrees that made this person appear to be, if anything, overqualified to be identifying skeletons from Limbo, and wondered why this person would be applying for such a.... menial position. And as she wondered, she also promptly reminded herself that WHY wasn't really any of her business. She should just set up an interview and hope that this 'Rosalie Szoboszlai' would mean no more musical-grad-students.

Dr. Brennan wouldn't like it, but, as a smart person once said, often-times, not making a decision is a decision itself.

So Dr. Brennan would just have to suck it up and deal with it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Today was the day. One week ago today, Cam had received the resume. Four days ago, she had conducted the interview. Three days ago, she had filed the paperwork, done the background check, and cleared the new employee with security. And this would be Rosalie's first day.

"No, Dr. Szoboszlai. Not Rosalie!" Cam reprimanded herself. But she couldn't help it, the girl was just so... YOUNG to be a doctor. Though, Cam had to say, the girl acted much older than her physical age suggested.

"Oh well," Cam said to herself, " Can't hide in the car forever, may as well face the firing squad and get it over with..."

Making sure she had everything and her doors were locked, Dr. Saroyan took the elevator up to the proper floor, and quickly spoke to the security gaurd on duty, informing him that the new employee was starting today, and to get her ID and a clearance keycard as soon as she got here. After signing the paperwork to get Rosalie.... Dr. Szoboszlai clearance, Cam went into the Medico-Legal Lab, and noted that - though she was a half hour early - Dr. Brennan was here, sitting in her office, already knee-deep in paperwork.

Several minutes later, after Cam had put her things in her office and booted up and logged-in to her computer, Dr. Saroyan glanced out her office door and saw that Hodgins and Angela had both arrived. Uncharacteristically, though, they were standing side-by-side, staring straight ahead at a point Cam couldn't see, in complete silence. Donning her lab coat, Cam went to investigate.

As she walked out of her office, she saw what had them dumbstruck.

Just inside the glass doors stood Rosalie. She looked perfectly professional, in slacks and a button-up under the standard-issue dark blue lab coat, notepad in hand, name tag already clipped to a pocket and hair pulled back in a severe-looking bun; but Cam was again struck by exactly how young the girl was. Professional or not, Rosalie didn't look a day over 16, though Cam knew the girl was 22.

"Dr. Szoboszlai, I see you found the place ok. Welcome to the Jeffersonian!" Dr. Saroyan said with a smile. Walking towards the group, she saw that Rosalie hadn't reacted at all but for a small smile and minute nod of her head. Seeing Hodgins about to make some completely inappropriate comment, Cam continued quickly, "This is Dr. Jack Hodgins, our Trace, Particulates, and Entomology expert; and Angela Montenegro, our Audio/Video specialist. Guys, this is our new assistant Forensic Anthropologist, Dr. Rosalie Szoboszlai."

"Since when? Brennan didn't say she hired anybody." This oh-so-eloquent statement came from Angela.

Hodgins immediately took up where she left off with "Yeah, last I heard we were still rotating grad students. Are you sure this chick is a doctor, Cam? She doesn't look old enough to drive."

"Yeah, Dr. Saroyan, this HAS to be some kind of joke," Angela went on.

Sighing, Cam replied, "Yes, Dr. Hodgins, I triple checked the records." Turning to Rosalie, she said, "Come on, since these two obviously haven't had enough coffee yet, I'll show you around."

As Dr. Saroyan led her away to begin the tour, Rosalie looked back at her new co-workers and very politely said," It was nice to meet you both, I look forward to working with you." She turned back around too soon to see them exchange a slightly confused look, then both turn and walk very quickly to Dr. Brennan's office.

It was going to be a loooooong day.


	2. Chapter 2

There was something... off about this new girl. Cam could feel it as she stood upstairs in the employee lounge, looking down at her team working in the lab. Brennan had taken her hiring a new assistant better than Cam thought she would, of course, Cam also often forgot that Dr. Brennan had an unnatural ability to rationalize almost anything. Her seeing logic in a logical decision should've been no surprise.

Angela and Hodgins were both noticeably chilly toward both Cam and Rosalie, who had asked them all to call her Rose. Dr. Brennan was... well, she was as welcoming as Dr. Brennan ever is.

Dr. Saroyan took a moment to watch the dynamic of her team as they got used to someone new. Up to this point, they had been very comfortable every time a new grad student or possible assistant came into the picture, simply going on as they normally would. With Rose, Jack was almost outright hostile, and Angela ignored her as well as she could. Well, that wasn't actually too hard, in the 5 hours she'd been here so far, Cam had actually forgotten Rose was there at least five times. The girl was extremely unobtrusive. She barely spoke, and when she did she was always very direct, saying only what needed to be said, and only elaborating if asked to do so. Through the tour this morning, Cam had tried to make some small talk, and failed miserably. Rose had answered all her questions in one or two words, and when the tour was over, her only question was, "What should I start with?"

At that point, all Cam could do was introduce the girl to Dr. Brennan and see what Rose would be working on. There were no cases at the moment, so Rose was working on identifying skeletons from Limbo.

What on Earth was it about this girl that had everyone do unsettled?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Rose was unwelcome here. She had known that since the moment she walked in this morning. It had taken her exactly 30 seconds to figure out that she would be doing her own lab work until she proved herself to these people. Dr. Saroyan seemed friendly enough, and Dr. Brennan appeared to be oblivious to how tense Dr. Hodgins and Miss Montenegro were.

Sighing, she determined that she would ask Dr. Saroyan this afternoon if she could bring in her own equipment. Rose was well aware that the Jeffersonian had the best equipment available, but... well, Rose didn't get her Masters in Engineering to not use it. The microscope she had developed was FAR more sophisticated than this standard lab stuff. All the patents were still pending, but maybe if she played her cards right she'd have a customer in the Jeffersonian once all the legalities were handled.

Nah, too early to be thinking about that.

Hearing the door to the lab open, she focused her hearing that direction. Long strides, dull thud, uneven steps... Male. Tall, 6'3"-6'5". Hard-soled shoes, probably loafers. Swagger, the guy is full of himself. Not in a hurry either.

"So, who wants to go to lunch?" This man said, very loudly. Rose could hear a smile in his voice, and imagined he had his arms stretched wide as he waited for an answer.

"Yeah, breaktime!" Hodgins cheered, with noises of agreement from both Dr. Saroyan and Angela. Rose heard him pulling off his lab coat. Looking at where she was in her work, she had to agree with the sentiment. She had already positively identified two sets of remains - they were in their plastic tubs next to her desk waiting to be shipped to their families - and was waiting on the mass spectrometer to finish analysing a soil sample from a third. She had just put in in 20 minutes ago, so it would still be nearly an hour before she got any results back.

"Don't you have a case you should be working on?" Dr. Brennan asked, not pausing in her examination of a skull. Ah, this must be the Agent Booth Dr. Saroyan mentioned.

"No, actually. I just finished all my paperwork that was due, and nothing new has come in yet," the man said, shoving his hands in his pockets and sounding arrogant. Rose could practically fell this guy's cocky smile twinkling. "Come on, Bones! You gotta eat sometime!"

Making a note about where she left off, Dr. Brennan gave in with, "Fine. You're not going shut up until I agree anyway." and a roll of her eyes.

A few moments later, the group started toward the door, good-naturedly bickering over whether to get Chinese, Thai, and go to the diner. Just as Booth, at the front of the pack, put his hand on the door to open it, Cam suddenly stopped and exclaimed, "Rose!" As Rose turned to look at the group, she saw Booth looking completely confused, Hodgins and Montenegro rolling their eyes, and Dr. Saroyan and Dr. Brennan both looking slightly regretful for having forgotten her. "Would you like to come to lunch, Rose? You haven't taken a break all day, you must be starving by now."

Rose quickly weighed her options. She could say no, and go buy lunch at the cafeteria downstairs, and not ruffle any feathers.... or she could have fun pissing off Hodgins.

Pissing off Hodgins won.

Smiling slightly at what should, with any luck, prove to be an entertaining lunch hour, Rose replied, "Sure, Dr. Saroyan, I'd love to." and quickly discarded her lab coat on the chair at her workstation.

Working here might be more amusing than Rose had anticipated.


	3. Chapter 3

One month. That's how long Rose had been working there, in the Medico-Legal lab of the Jeffersonian. She didn't think any of her co-workers really liked her, but she knows that she had earned some professional respect at the very least. If nothing else, Dr. Saroyan and Dr. Brennan regard her as highly skilled enough to assist on cases, and manage herself when there isn't a case. Hodgins was still outright hostile, and Angela just didn't deal with her unless absolutely necessary.

Then there's Booth.

When Booth was around, Rose couldn't help but feel like she was being sized-up. He was always watching her. He never seemed quite comfortable enough with her to tease her like he did everyone else, but he didn't appear to have anything against her either. For the most part, Rose could ignore it, put it out of her mind and just concentrate on work. But there were times, when she hadn't slept for a few days or eaten properly because of the nightmares, that she couldn't help but mull over the information while she worked.

She was fairly certain he didn't know. There's no way he could. She had done an amazing job with that encryption, no one could access those files, even the few decent hackers that the government employed would just see the cover. And the cover was flawless.

So why was it that, every time he would stand there, half-listening to whatever the other "squints" were reporting, observing her, she felt that he knew.

To Rose, it was a very disconcerting feeling.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Booth didn't know what to think of the new girl. Yeah, it'd been a month, so she wasn't REALLY new, but she wasn't exactly part of the team either. He remembered back to that first day she was here, and everyone had gone out to lunch. He and Cam had made an honest effort to get to know her, but all questions about her past were met with either one-or-two word answers or "I'd rather not discuss that". Obviously this girl had a past; one that she wanted to hide from everyone... or one that she wanted to hide , ever the FBI Special Agent, Booth had done the logical and rational thing.

Full background check.

Bones had argued, not about him doing a background check, but about the fact that he labeled it logical and rational. "But Booth, the logical and rational thing to do would be to respect her obvious wish for privacy. I seriously doubt she has anything in her past that would be relevant to her job at the Jeffersonian."

But Booth knew that that wasn't the case. If Rose was hiding something, there is definitely a reason for it, and it most likely had a HUGE bearing on the here-and-now.

The only problem is, he didn't find anything.

Seeley Booth liked to think he was good at his job, but after a month of digging, he was maybe starting to question his investigative skills. Electronic check through government databases had yielded nothing but a city and day of birth, mother's name, and a driver's lisence and passport. Not a single speeding or parking ticket, no school records, no known father. The only reason her fingerprints were even on file was because they were taken by the Jeffersonian when she was hired, and when he ran those through the various other networks, they didn't match any person, or even an 'unknown' from a crime scene.

It was possible that she was just a goody-two-shoes that had led a really non-descript life. But the way she didn't talk about her past rubbed him the wrong way. If her life was just boring to the point that the government has almost no record of her existing, why wouldn't she talk about it? For that matter, she barely spoke at all. Only when she had been asked a direct question or had an observation to make in relation to her work did she ever speak, and then it was using an absolute bare-minimum of words. Exactly enough to get the point across and not a syllable more.

She was an odd little duck.

And he was GOING to find out what she was hiding.


	4. Chapter 4

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

"So, how did this last case go for the two of you?" asked Dr. Sweets, looking at his most stubborn and baffling patients.

Booth simply raised an eyebrow at the psychologist's attempt at getting them to talk. Brennan, seeing that Booth wasn't going to answer the question, decided to give Sweets a break. "It went well. Though why a mother would want to kill her daughter-in-law over a turkey is still confusing to me..."

"A turkey?!" Sweets' exclaimed, eyes growing wide.

"The Thanksgiving turkey was dry," Booth clarified, taking some pity on the poor kid. "So the mother-in-law shoved a slab of 'properly cooked' turkey down the vic's throat to 'show her what it is suppose to taste like', choking the vic."

Sweets looked slightly nauseus for a moment, then got a confused look on his face. "Dr. Brennan, how did you figure out she choked from her bones?"

"I didn't," she stated. Looking at Booth, she continued, "And I still don't know why you got so offended when Rose suggested it. Part of her job is to help with these cases, and I had no insight as to cause of death. It was a rather amazing observation on her part that the damaged hyoid might be from internal pressure instead of external."

"I didn't get offended! I got..." Booth trailed off.

"Yes you did, you had the same look on your face as when I bring up sex - Yeah, that look, right there -, like you were horrified that someone dare bring it up in public," Brennan argued... excuse me, 'bickered'.

"It is not 'taking offense', it is merely me being slightly uncomfortable," Booth 'bickered'.

Cutting in, Sweets tried to get back to the interesting stuff, "OK, so why did you get uncomfortable with Rose figuring out cause of death when Dr. Brennan was at a dead end. No pun intended."

"Because I don't think it's fair," Booth stated huffily.

"Don't think what's fair?" Sweets was now very confused. Dr. Brennan wasn't doing any better.

Booth shifted in his seat, not wanting to answer the question. After a few moments, Brennan piped in with," Booth, the sooner you answer the question, the sooner we get out of here." Ah, she'd been picking up a bit on the cop-psychology from the interrogation room.

"I don't think it's fair that she expects us to trust her blindly." It wasn't the WHOLE truth, but it was part of the problem.

"It was hardly trusting her blindly, Booth, there was physical evidence to substantiate her hypothesis. Does this have something to do with why you are always watching her?" Brennan connected the dots.

"Always watching her?" Sweets was now intrigued.

After a moment of silence, the FBI agent tried to explain, "There's something.... off about that girl. She doesn't talk about her past, it's like she doesn't have one. It's weird."

"I don't talk about my past, does that make me weird?" Dr. Brennan asked, defensively.

"No, because while you don't talk about your past, you at least talk about other things. Rose is so silent most of the time, it's like she isn't there. No one knows ANYTHING about her, not even the government." Oops. He wasn't suppose to say that. Booth quickly turned to look out the window as as Sweets eyebrows rose once again and Brennan gave him a extremely confused look.

"You've been investigating her?" This was a very interesting development for Sweets.

"Like I said, there's something... off about her." Booth rubbed a hand over his eyes, resigned that he was going to have to 'fess up. "When she first started working there, I picked up the weird vibe. So, I did a little digging... and came up empty-handed. All I could find were day and place of birth, her mother's name, a driver's licence, and a passport. No school records, no name for a father, no tickets, no registered vehicle, not even a last-known address. Nothing. It's like her records were wiped, but there would be a required security clearance if the government had wiped them."

"That is odd," Brennan agreed, knowing by now how the system works.

"Odd or not, it isn't really your place to go digging into her past like that," Sweets said, reprimandingly. "If Rose wanted people to know about her life, she would share it with them. Did it occurr to you at any point that maybe she has a painful past that she would simply rather forget?" Booth at least had the sense to look chastised. Looking at the clock, Sweets was surprised to note that, for the first time since these sessions started, they had stayed for the full amount of time allotted. "OK, our time is up. See you guys, same time next week."

As the unusual partners left his office, Lance Sweets thought about Booth's digging into this woman's past, and wondered at the lack of information. Booth was right, it was really weird. Maybe some further research was required. With that thought, Dr. Sweets decided that tomorrow, he would be paying a visit to the Jeffersonian to meet this Rose person. She sounded very intriguing.


End file.
